The Japanese space probe Hayabusa successfully landed on the asteroid Itokawa, located about 290 million km away from the Earth, during its landing attempt Sunday, but did not drop the equipment for collecting surface samples, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said Wednesday.
The space probe stayed there for about 30 minutes in the first landing by a Japanese space vehicle on an astronomical object, according to the agency.
The agency will decide Thursday whether to have the Hayabusa make a second landing attempt.
While the body of Hayabusa has not suffered any serious damage, some censors need to be examined, JAXA said.
The agency announced Sunday that the space probe failed to make a landing on its first attempt.
The Hayabusa was launched in 2003 to travel to Itokawa to collect the samples. It was the first attempt by Japan to send equipment to an astronomical object outside the Earth. But the mission has been troubled by a series of glitches.
A rehearsal was aborted earlier this month when it had trouble finding a landing spot.
Also, a small robotic lander deployed from the probe was lost. Minerva, weighing less than 600 grams and equipped with three small cameras, was expected to hop around the asteroid and send such data as surface temperatures and images back to Earth via the Hayabusa.
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